THEY were hard days in the shack on Tathra Road. Eva had some very hard going to put up with, as the kids were close together and times were hard and quite often not much food in the house. 

But she stuck to them at all times, and quite often her and I would go short on a meal, so the kids could have enough.

I was forced to steal vegetables, young corn or anything we could eat.

Whenever there was another baby on the way Eva’s mum would send a bag of clothes and quite often a second-hand pram down to Tathra on the Cobargo.

I’d help load Dick Rawson’s lorry so he would drop our stuff at the shack. Eva had to walk to Tathra to get food, pushing the pram with one kid in it and a couple hanging on the side.

To get to Bega she had to “bum a lift” on Dick Robinson’s lorry with Jack Salway driving.

When I was cutting timber in the bush, Eva would ring a cowbell if I was needed at home, which was pretty damn often.

It was while we were living at the shack that Mum died. She was only 49 but had suffered from asthma since she was about nine years old.

I bought an old racehorse off Jack Evans for one pound and used him looking for work, till he fell down a well at Murray’s Flat and died.

Nancy, our eldest, surely the worst kid ever born, drowned a cat in our water drum and it took me all day to refill it, carrying water up from a waterhole in the gully. Later we were able to get a small tank.

I made the kids little Lammers and they would spend hours roaming through the bush killing anything small that moved, mostly ants.

Ray Lovelock brought the bread to Tathra from Bega and many people he just gave bread to as they couldn’t pay for it, me included. Sharky Rogers travelled for Rawleighs and sometimes he would stay the night.

Eva would set out every pot she could find with jelly that Sharky provided and we’d all have a damn good feed of jelly. I don’t know who paid for it. No wonder he went broke.

I never went through the doors of a hotel in 10 years and beer was only sixpence a mug.